Friday, September 09, 2011

QotD: It's The Stupid Economy Edition.

Both Paul Krugman and my roomie seem down on the Dear Reader's economic plan. Considering that one sleeps in John Maynard Keynes Underoos while the other has a tattoo that reads "I ♥ John Galt", you've got to hand it to the White House for coming up with a proposal that nobody could love.

Meanwhile, I'd like to offer my services to moderate the next GOP debate:

"Now, if you will all look down at your podiums, you will notice that you've all been provided with a short document. A few of you might even be vaguely familiar with it. If you don't mind, could you each just look in the part headed 'Article II' and point out to me the sentence or phrase that indicates that 'job creation' or 'the economy' is within the presidential purview?

We'll start with you, on the end, with the hair. No, not you... the other one on the end, with the hair..."

Job creation is in the president's purview to the extent that there's a lot that he can do to screw things up. I think that at least some of the GOP candidates sort of get that.

Unfortunately, too many Americans have gotten the idea that the president / government not only CAN do things to "create jobs", but SHOULD do it. In that sense, it's a trick question: a candidate can't exactly say, "I won't do anything to create jobs because it's not a constitutional power of the presidency, or indeed of the federal government at all."

I read the speech transcript today because I was afraid to actually watch the video with any hard objects near for fear that the ignorant smugness might cause me to start throwing things. I am alway calmer when reading. It didn't look like he came up with anything new, just repeated the same ol' same ol' that he's been smugly repeating since... well, since the very beginning of hopenchange. It still aint working.

I particularly "liked" the part where he said it was all paid for because he would just ask congress to add the costs to the 1.5 Trillion that they are supposed to already be cutting from the amount that they are raising the amount they will spend in the next ten years. Wow, what a twisted mess that. Reading between the lines, the "wink wink nudge nudge" was almost enough to knock me out of my chair.

It reminded me of how my second ex wife would say we could afford to go out and party because she would just spend that much less at WalMart this week when payday was a week and a half away and the bank account only had $2.41 in it (which was better than we were usually doing 4 days after payday). Man that woman could spend money. You think Obama is bad, you aint seen nothin.